# Lecture Notes on Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics (Physics 211)


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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS
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**Instructor**: Prof. Oskar Hallatschek (he/his), *Office*: 274D Stanley Hall, *Email*: ohallats@berkeley.edu


The following lecture notes are designed to complement the Berkeley Physics course 211 material covered in the spring of 2024. Special thanks to Mike Zalatel and Dunghai Lee for their invaluable lecture notes, which have partially influenced my own.

The course structure is adapted and reordered from Kardar's textbook.
- Probability & information entropy  
    - Kardar 2, Arovas 1
- Fundamentals of thermodynamics via molecular perspective - ensemble theory  
    - Kardar 4, Arovas 4
- Dynamics of interacting particles  
    - Kardar 5, Arovas 6
- Monte Carlo, Debye-Hueckel, Diffusion
    - lecture notes
- Study of Hamiltonian dynamics and ergodicity
    - Arovas 3, Kardar 3.1, 3.2
- Quantum statistical mechanics  
    - Kardar 6+7, Arovas 5
- Exploration of mean field and Landau theory 
    - Arovas 7

Important Notes:
- Undergraduate level thermodynamics, a prerequisite for this course, will not be covered. Students are encouraged to review this material independently if needed.
- A brief overview of probabilistic reasoning will be provided (in class and discussions); however, extensive time cannot be dedicated to this. Students are advised to actively revise these concepts on their own.
- The syllabus is subject to modifications, aiming to incorporate advanced topics relevant to current research in active matter, (quantum) information theory, and machine learning. As this is my first time teaching this course, the extent of these topics' inclusion is yet to be determined.

Syllabus Updates:
The syllabus will be updated throughout the course.



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